Exam JLPT - Realy Worth?

WHY JLPT?

Who can been studying Japanese for a while chances are that you heard of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).  While some learners jump at the chance to prove their language skills, many of you may be wondering Why you choose to study JLPT? 

If you're going to work in Japan doing something that requires Japanese ability (in other words, not teaching English), you may be strongly urged or required to take the JLPT (level 1, the hardest; some relatively simple jobs may only require the JLPT 2). It used to be that if you were going to study at the undergraduate or graduate level (not study abroad, but actually enroll in a Japanese university), you also were recommended to take the JLPT, but now there is a separate (slightly easier) test for that. Still, if you are applying for a graduate program in Japan or your home country, passing the 1kyuu can help, if passing the JLPT will have little impact on your life. Besides these two purposes, it's simply a pissing contest. Now as an intellectual contest it can be fun, but even if you enjoy tests in general, there's nothing special to like about the JLPT.

Of course, I was reading philosophy and literature, which is probably not what a lot of the people taking the JLPT are working toward, but the JLPT is not simple a test of whether you can speak, listen, read, and write Japanese. It doesn't test speaking at all, and it barely tests writing, and then only indirectly. So if you just want to speak Japanese, there's no reason to take the JLPT. And because of the way the test is structured, even passing the 1kyuu doesn't mean you're “fluent” in Japanese. If you aren't looking for work or school, of course you can still pay a lot of money and take the JLPT for fun, but if I were you I'd save my money and just buy more textbooks instead.

If you don't need a certificate saying you have a college level reading ability in Japanese, there's little reason to take the JLPT. I hear a lot of people complain that when they studied for the 1kyuu (and even the 2kyuu), they had to study a lot of things they had never seen or heard and never saw again after the test. Well, as I was preparing for the 1kyuu, I often encountered the grammar and vocabulary I was studying in the books I was reading.